Duties and responsibilities of the Master Electrician License holder

The week Jamal's master license was issued, Diane took him to lunch and gave him a list she had written by hand on a legal pad. At the top she had written: "Your name is on every job now." Below it were the things a master of record does in Michigan: knowing every permit the company pulls, making sure every crew is properly licensed and supervised, reading every correction notice, signing off on every design the company builds, keeping his own license current and making sure the company's license stays tied to his. "The license is not a certificate on the wall," she said. "It's a job."

This lesson explains what the law expects from a Michigan master electrician, especially one whose license qualifies an electrical contractor: responsibility for code compliance, supervision of journeymen and apprentices, permits and inspections, design and planning, the one-contractor rule, keeping the company's license accurate, and the conduct that can lead to discipline under the Skilled Trades Regulation Act. Statute and rule wording is summarized, not quoted; read Act 407 and its rules for the exact requirements.

In charge of code compliance

Section 711 of Act 407 describes the master electrician who qualifies a business that is not owned by a master. That person must be a full-time employee who lives in Michigan and is actively in charge of and responsible for Michigan electrical code compliance of all the business's installations. Each part of that description has meaning. Full-time rules out a part-time consultant who lends a license. Michigan residency keeps the responsible person within reach of Michigan jobs and agencies. Actively in charge means real authority over how work is done, not a title. And all installations means every job, not just the big ones.

For Jamal, being actively in charge meant changing how he spent his week. He now reviewed every permit application before it was filed, looked at every correction notice and decided how to fix it, visited each active job regularly, and set the company's standards for things like labeling, torque, conductor sizing, and grounding and bonding details. He could delegate the work, but not the responsibility. When a foreman made a mistake, the inspector and the bureau would see it as the company's mistake, and the company's master would answer for it.

Supervision of journeymen and apprentices

The licensing ladder is built on supervision. Apprentices work under licensed electricians, and journeymen perform work for electrical contractors. Act 407 and its rules set out how apprentices must be supervised, including limits on how many apprentices a licensed electrician may supervise on a job. Those limits and their details change from time to time, so the master checks the current rule and makes sure crew assignments meet it. A crew of three apprentices sent to a job with no licensed electrician on site violates the supervision rules no matter how skilled the apprentices are.

The master also makes sure everyone on the crew holds the right license or registration. Nina's spreadsheet listed each person's license or apprentice registration, its number and its expiration date, and Jamal checked it monthly. When an apprentice's registration lapsed, he pulled that apprentice from electrical work until it was renewed, because hours worked without registration might not count and the company's supervision record would look bad in any investigation.

Permits, plans and inspections

Permits are issued to the electrical contractor, and the master is the person who answers for what the permit covers. Before a permit is filed, the master makes sure the scope is accurate and the design meets the Michigan Electrical Code: service and feeder sizes, load calculations, grounding and bonding, overcurrent protection, special occupancy rules and the Michigan amendments from Lesson 5. On jobs with engineered drawings, the master still checks that the installation follows the drawings and the code, and raises problems with the engineer early.

When an inspection fails, the master reads the correction notice, decides whether the inspector is right, and either has the work corrected or pursues an interpretation or appeal through the channels in Lesson 6. Jamal kept a log of correction notices by type. After three months he saw that most of the company's failures involved labeling and working clearance in electrical rooms, so he made those the topic of the next two monthly crew meetings, and the failures stopped.

The one-contractor rule in practice

Section 713 says a master license cannot be used to satisfy the eligibility requirement for more than one electrical contractor license, and the bureau's page says a master can be associated with only one contractor at a time. In practice, a master who changes employers must make sure the old company's license is updated to remove him before the new company lists him. A master who owns a company and qualifies it with his own license cannot also be the master of record for someone else's company. And a company whose only master leaves must find a replacement and update its license, or stop contracting for electrical work until it does.

Diane planned for that risk. Cedar River paid for a second journeyman, Marcus, to work toward his master license so that the company would not depend entirely on one person. If Jamal ever left, Diane's own master license could qualify the company again for a short time while Marcus finished qualifying.

Keeping licenses and records current

The master keeps his own license current through renewal and the required code update course, covered in Lesson 11. He also makes sure the company's contractor license accurately lists him and that changes in ownership, address or the master of record are reported to the bureau as the rules require. Customers, general contractors and enforcing agencies look up license status, and an expired or inaccurate license can stop permits and payments.

Conduct that leads to discipline

Act 407 lets the department and the board discipline licensees for a range of conduct. The general categories include practicing without the required license, helping an unlicensed person practice, doing work without required permits, violating the code, making false statements on applications or permit documents, incompetence and conduct that endangers the public. Penalties can include fines, probation, required education, suspension and revocation. A master who lends his license to another company, signs for work he never supervised, or allows unlicensed people to do electrical work puts his license and the company's license at risk.

# Monthly license and registration check for a crew (study aid)
from datetime import date

today = date(2026, 6, 1)
crew = [
    ("Jamal Carter", "master", date(2026, 12, 31)),
    ("Marcus Hill", "journeyman", date(2026, 12, 31)),
    ("Ethan Brooks", "apprentice", date(2026, 8, 14)),
    ("Lena Ortiz", "apprentice", date(2026, 5, 20)),
]
for name, lic, expires in crew:
    days = (expires - today).days
    if days < 0:
        status = "EXPIRED - pull from electrical work"
    elif days <= 60:
        status = f"renew soon ({days} days)"
    else:
        status = "current"
    print(f"{name:14} {lic:11} {status}")

Jamal Carter   master      current
Marcus Hill    journeyman  current
Ethan Brooks   apprentice  current
Lena Ortiz     apprentice  EXPIRED - pull from electrical work

The check flags Lena Ortiz, an apprentice whose registration expired before the first of June. Jamal removed her from electrical tasks for two days while she renewed, and assigned her to material handling and site cleanup in the meantime. The calculator also gives Ethan a reminder to renew in August. A five-minute monthly check prevents most supervision problems.

Leadership beyond the minimum

The law sets the minimum. Good masters go further: they train apprentices properly, keep up with code changes before the required course, share lessons from failed inspections, and make safety a daily habit, not a binder on a shelf. Diane told Jamal that the best measure of a master is not how many correction notices he avoids but how many electricians he leaves behind who do the work right when he is not there.

Delegating without giving up responsibility

A master of record cannot personally be on every job, and the law does not expect that. What the law expects is that the master is actually in charge of code compliance on all installations. In practice that means delegating work to qualified journeymen while keeping control of the standards. Jamal set clear rules: every job had a licensed journeyman or master in charge, apprentices worked under the supervision the law requires, foremen called him before deviating from the plans, and he personally reviewed services, large feeders, fire alarm interfaces and any work involving a Michigan amendment.

Delegation also meant giving foremen the information they needed. Jamal held a short weekly meeting where each foreman reported upcoming inspections, open corrections and questions. He wrote down the answers so that the same question did not have to be answered twice, and he kept a short list of code points that had caused corrections in the past year. Over time the list became a training tool for new journeymen.

A monthly compliance review

Once a month Jamal and Nina walked through a checklist: open permits and their status, failed inspections and corrections, apprentice registrations and supervision, journeyman licenses and their expiration dates, the company's contractor license, insurance certificates and any customer complaints. The review took about an hour. It caught two apprentice registrations that were about to lapse, one permit that had never been closed after the final inspection, and a certificate of insurance that a general contractor needed renewed. Small problems found early rarely become discipline cases.

The review also gave Jamal a record that he was actively in charge, which matters if the bureau ever asks how a master supervised the company's work.